I also advise you to read this piece by the Chicago Tribune’s Brian Hamilton, listing and detailing many of the various operating procedures for hydraulic lifts employed by college football .

And also read this discussion on whether or not this accident will cost Kelly his job.

Without further ado, here’s what Kelly had to say about the tragedy:

From Kelly’s opening statement:

Extraordinary the way the university has come together. The mass was so good for me and everybody on our football team, our football family, the university. The leadership that Father Jenkins and Jack Swarbrick has helped me with me and all those associated with our football program.

On Wednesday I made the decision that we could have a productive and safe practice outdoors. Productive because the conditions were such, although windy, were not unlike many days that I had practiced at other universities, including here at the University of Notre Dame. Productive practice is important obviously within our offense, as well. Throwing the football, you have to be able to look at the weather conditions and find out whether you believe it’s going to be a productive day first. We believed it to be productive. It was productive, obviously up until the tragedy.

The next thing that is important is that it’s a safe session, that the practice must be safe. That takes on a litany of different things when you talk about safe. When we’re indoors, my biggest concern is always running out on the track or running in an area where there’s medical equipment or water bottles or just the safety of our football team.

Outdoors, different weather elements obviously play in that relative to safety, as well. You know, whether it’s a tornado warning the day before or it’s a lightning storm that’s in the area, or the heat index is at a certain number, and certainly wind. All of those elements have to be evaluated in making the decision, which I made the decision that I felt it was productive and safe.

We have systems in place to make certain and that deal with issues of safety. Clearly in this instance, they failed. We are in the process of examining all of those systems that are in place and looking for those answers. That’s currently where we are: investigating this tragedy and carefully looking at everything relative to safety.

You know, I can’t emphasize enough how important it is that, when you talk about taking your football team outside, those items are at the forefront of every coach’s ? not just me, not just here at the University of Notre Dame ? everybody in the country thinks about the same things. That’s probably the one area obviously that we’re all grappling with right now.

I can recall being out at the practice site. It was a windy day, but a productive day. Next thing I knew, I heard that the tower was down. First thing that I did is I got to my coaches that were obviously affected by the situation, some of them running around. I gathered the coaches quickly, two of them, and said, Keep practicing. At that point we had players that were starting to migrate towards the accident scene. I thought it was important for me to keep our guys away from that accident scene.

Our coaches did a great job of monitoring our players, staying with our players, keeping them preoccupied, as I then left to go to the accident scene.

I got to the accident scene and saw that our training staff were with Declan, and I wanted to make certain that that area was in good hands. It looked like to me everything was moving in the right direction. We had Notre Dame responders, we had ambulance responders. And once I felt comfortable in that situation, where we had professionals on?site dealing with it, I went back inside to the practice field and subsequently called our football team together at midfield. We prayed for Declan. I told and informed our football team of the injury, the seriousness of it, and I then dismissed our football team.

That’s my best recollection of the events surrounding the accident itself.

Obviously there’s going to be a lot of speculation, there’s going to be a lot of questions. I’m not really adept at being able to handle some of the specifics. I can tell you that we’re working hard to get all those answers. We’re so close to this event occurring that we’re still putting together a lot of the information that everybody I’m sure is interested in, as we are as well.

Q. Why didn’t anyone tell him to come down? Who is responsible for monitoring stuff during practice as conditions change? Why wasn’t there anyone to tell him to bring the lift down?

COACH KELLY: Certainly, as you know, those are all the things that we’re examining right now. We could probably come up with a number of different things that we’re all wondering. Those are the questions that are being asked exactly as you’ve asked them. We’re doing that, and have been doing it since the accident occurred.

Q. Is there a max wind speed prescribed for those pieces of equipment, that you know of?

COACH KELLY: I don’t. Again, if I had the knowledge specifically of wind speed and heights of lifts, all of those, I certainly would provide those to you. I just don’t have that information.

Will you be back outside again next week and will you have videographers up in the lift?

COACH KELLY: We will be outside. We will not be using the lifts until we clearly have more information relative to some of the questions that were asked here today.

Q. Has anybody been temporarily relieved of their duties or assignments while the investigation goes on?

COACH KELLY: Not that I’m aware of.

Let’s talk about Tulsa.

Q. Ever in your coaching career, this week, Declan’s death, the way this turned out, has there ever been a more difficult week for you?

COACH KELLY: As a football coach, there’s been more difficult weeks relative to the game itself. But in terms of the tragedy that occurred, there’s never been a more difficult time in my life.

[…] was murdered in late September. A couple days before Halloween, Notre Dame student videographer Declan Sullivan was killed when his hydraulic scissor-lift collapsed in historically high winds. The circumstances […]